Early this year I advertised my availability for bass duties on JMB and had quite a lot of interest.
I spoke to a couple of guys who had recorded an album (with another in the pipeline): they sent me some of the material which I learnt and we had an informal audition and long chat which went very well and I was in. They explained they had being going out as duo but had a percussionist/drummer in place along with a fiddler and they were looking to do gigs and festivals over the summer as a full band. We had a full rehearsal and then took on new material, rehearsing it up and doing around 8 gigs up to July including a number of Festivals. It soon became apparent however that they were still going out as a duo with acoustic guitars (which they only mentioned after the event in rehearsals, by saying , 'Oh we screwed that up when we did it on Friday 'etc) and I put this down to they had booked ahead as a duo and they were fulfilling those gigs.
However as I was signed onto their Facebook page I started to get notifications and photos of gigs they had done, not only as a duo but as a trio and even a quartet started appearing: over August they did around 4 gigs at Festivals without me and without even mentioning it!
I sent a very polite email to them saying I had just been made aware of missing the August dates to which they said they'd always done gigs with different line ups and it was dependent on the size of the venue and the wishes of promoters. Whilst I saw no sign of a smokescreen, they had photos where they were on what looked like a large tented stage....
Needless to say, I know there are no issues with my playing or if bass does not fit, but I feel as if ( ironically) I'm part of the 'gig economy' and on a zero hours contract where I'm last in line to get the call. Incidentally the material on both their albums has bass all through it and whilst one of them can play the Bass, they have not gone out without me and played the bass themselves.
So do I suck it up ( they are perfectly nice guys, as are the other players and we get on fine) and continue to pick up the scraps in terms of gigs or would you move on to a band where bass is integral to the live performance?
I am with 2 other bands, 1 who gigs monthly and another who've only done about 4 gigs this year.